Has The Brand Extension Been A Success? A Look At Where RAW & SD Live Stand On The Eve Of WWE Extreme Rules

RAW in 2016 had the never-ending Seth Rollins vs Kevin Owens feud; SmackDown! in 2017 had room to give Jinder Mahal a WWE Title reign and have him feud with Randy Orton for months; now on SmackDown! who does AJ Styles feud with after Rusev? Samoa Joe? The Miz? He literally only has those two options as heels unless they turn a New Day member heel or give Sheamus a renewed push. Don’t get me wrong, AJ vs either Miz or Joe would be great, but the fact is that there’s simply not enough challengers on each brand.

Proponents of the brand extension will say that it creates new stars, but since 2016 who actually became a new star? Jinder Mahal? Baron Corbin? Shinsuke Nakamura? Finn Balor? Who is a main eventer now that couldn’t become one before the brand extension? They would’ve found room regardless for people such as Ronda Rousey, so who exactly benefited? Instead, we now get to watch Mojo Rawley vs No Way Jose every week along with Cien Almas vs Sin Cara on SmackDown! because they must kill time. They now have room for matches and feuds that before would be on “C shows” such as Sunday Night Heat and Velocity.

I have a very simple solution for all of this: Get rid of the Universal Title and unify the tag and women‘s titles.

Next, make SmackDown! an exclusive show for the women‘s and tag team divisions. Seriously, with all this talk of the women’s revolution, I’m surprised that they didn’t think of giving the women’s division their own show. In fact, add women’s tag team titles as well. RAW would then be focused on the men’s main event scene and the mid-card. This would truly differentiate both brands and use them both beneficially.

I have another idea, but it would be hard to pull off. What if they made one brand TV-14 and kept the other TV-PG? This would again differentiate the brands and bring more excitement to the shows. It would also add interest to see TV-PG superstars moving to the TV-14 brand. That said, there are issues with advertisers and how they would handle WrestleMania and other big events that must include both brands. The only thing that I can think of, is having the first half of WrestleMania TV-PG and the other TV-14, but like I said it would be hard to pull off.

The main thing is that they need to make the brands distinct and not just the same thing under a different name. They also need to make the titles mean more and use the time that they have more wisely. I think that these changes would make the shows better. The brand extension is not a bad idea but creating two companies in one is incredibly silly. The best solution is to split the divisions among the two shows.

Related: “How To Fix WWE’s ‘Brock Lesnar Problem’ w/ The Universal Championship” by Neil Raymond